Blog Post 3: Political Parties

Political Parties

Political parties are probably the first thing you think of(after the president) when you think about the American government. The exact definition of a political party is "a group of people with similar political goals and opinions." Along with being a group of like-minded people, political parties try to get candidates elected into office so that they can push the policies that they and their supporters(citizens) want to see implemented. Alright that's neat, but what does this all mean in reality? In the U.S., political parties are more or less dichotomous. There are of course other political parties, but they don't have anywhere near the same amount of people in support of them. The main political groups in the U.S. are the Republicans and the Democrats. Republicans mainly represent the conservative point of view while the Democrats do the same for liberals. They've been the two opposing parties for some years now, and it's become evident which people (generally) support each group, which is what I'll be exploring in this post.

(2018 Congressional Election Results by district)
Red-Republican
Blue-Democrat

(Density Population Map)

Blue-Very Densely populated

White- Least Dense

Above you can see two maps of the United States. Now, why are you looking at these maps? Well it's not because they're the prettiest maps of the U.S. You're looking at these two maps rn because they help me prove a simple, specific point. That Americans that live in a less populated, more rural area are more likely to vote Republican while people who live in larger cities and more densely populated areas are more likely to vote as a Democrat. The areas where this is the most evident is actually in Nevada. Nevada's most populated area is Las Vegas, and what color is it's district? That's right, nice, cool, blue. But compare this to the rest of Nevada. Not really much there, in terms of population, and what color is the upper half of Nevada? Red. Now there are many other examples in the two maps, such as most of the blue pockets in red states are in some of that states most populated city's. Texas and Florida have really clear examples of this, with towns like San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Miami, and Orlando all surrounded by a sea of red. Another geographical trend that you can see in this data is that as the "plain states" or the states in the middle of the country are much more likely to lean towards the Republican side, but the opposite is true for the coasts of the country as they tend to lean more Democrat.